


The Work Sucks, But The Benefits Are Great

by Flynn_Voltage_Taggart



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Established Friendship, M/M, Mute Gordon, and if that segment towards the end does not make it clear enough, cw alcohol, deliverable: Gordon gives and receives a kiss, pre res-cas, they are both bi and bad at asking questions, they give each other a hard time because they are friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29226699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flynn_Voltage_Taggart/pseuds/Flynn_Voltage_Taggart
Summary: Both stuck working a slow Saturday at the Black Mesa Research Facility, Barney decides its a good of a time as any to get Gordon to take a break from his rigorous schedule and get him that beer he owed him.
Relationships: Barney Calhoun/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	The Work Sucks, But The Benefits Are Great

**Author's Note:**

> Gordon uses signed dialogue which is in quotation marks.
> 
> ~~~ denotes time skips

One more line of this drafted report on research findings...

If he could make it through one more line, he could push himself to read another and one more and another after that until he had seemed busy enough for the day.

Gordon Freeman's hit the cool surface of the makeshift desk in one of the old labs.

He just needed to read one more line. He could focus on one more line if he could just open his eyes or lift his head. He had not been that tired just a few seconds ago

Even when he was not trying to fight the stagnating force of exhaustion, there was still a feeling of warm pressure on his back and around his middle. Thinking about it, it almost felt like hands...

Wait, hands?

His eyes flew open as one hand scrambled across the desk for his glasses while the other weakly tried to push him up and away from the unfamiliar grip.

"Whoa, whoa. Easy, doc," a voice that was certainly familiar in its quaint but warm timbre spoke, "You're perfectly safe. I've got you."

Before he had much time to protest, the warm hand around his midsection moved and was gently sliding his thick glasses tenderly up the bridge of his nose.

The form in front of him became clearer. A short but solid figure in a Black Mesa standard issue guard uniform with the tie a bit crooked around the collar stood next to him. It seemed that figure was connected to the warm hand splayed over his back, presumably with the same slightly tanned complexion from work partially under the brilliant New Mexico sun as what he could see. Yes, he knew this sight well-enough, at least he thought he did.

"Barney?" his finger movements felt slow, like he was trying to push his body through peanut butter.

"Yeah. It's me, Barney. I am glad I came in when I did. You are real lucky you did not ding yourself up on that desk, Doc. Worried you might have given yourself a concussion real bad. Are you alright?"

Slowly, he up righted himself, enough so that Barney's hands would no longer linger by his shoulder blades, enough to make sure he wouldn't worry the guard hovering next to him.

It did not seem to soothe Barney enough though seeing as he was still watching over him with those big green and brown eyes.

He tried to flash a smile, but it was far too stiff and stilted. He was sure if he was on Barney's end he would not feel at ease with the way he was baring his teeth like a cornered animal either.

Humor. Humor would make this little workplace accident smoothed itself over. 

Sitting up a bit taller now and with a more natural vague upward twinge of his mouth instead of that picture day monstrosity, he asked, "What am I in for this time, Officer Calhoun?"

Barney was quick with a retort, “You mean to tell me you did something worse than blowing up the microwave, Doctor Freeman?"

Good. No need to fret about getting one of the research supervisors on his case over his lack of "proper personal upkeep habits". If he could get by on 3 hours in grad school, Black Mesa shouldn't have to be any different.

"That thing was limping on its last legs before I got here!" he countered, more than happy for a bit of good natured rivalry with the guard who had decided that he was worth the trouble to get to know.

"And it was limping along just fine until somebody went and left their spoon in a bowl of reheated soup."

"I was tired."

"Do my ears deceive me?" Barney made an exaggerating gesture of cupping his hand around his ear, "Are you finally admitting that you did it?"

"You have no proof it wasn't Doctor Bennett."

"Sounds like something someone with a guilty conscious would say."

"Does Black Mesa pay you five fifteen an hour to pester their research and development team?" 

"No, but they pay me five thirty five an hour to protect company property like that microwave. And to know that you're only a research associate." 

"What do you want, Barney?" Gordon asked, resigning to turn his lab stool away from the flickering display of the laptop he had been failing to read earlier to give his unexpected guest his full attention.

"I still owe you a beer from a while ago. You remember that bet from a few weeks back, about the vents?"

He did not in fact remember that bet in the slightest, and he wasn't sure Barney hadn't just made it up to have an excuse to come visit him on this particularly slow day. He nodded along anyway.

"Well, I figured since neither of us have a shift tomorrow and the facility is more open at this time of the week that maybe we could go into town, and I figured we could go to that saloon a bit down the road. Y'know...just to make sure we are all settled up."

A beer? 

It would be nice to spend some time outside of that crowded break room or stuffy vents with Barney. He was surprisingly good company. He had a way of telling stories that got people to gather around him, and he had the strangest ideas about some things, namely extraterrestrial life, that you could not help by buy into because of that fervor in his voice and in the way he moved. If that was his impression of Barney from work, seeing him loosened up a bit with a drink and without that ridiculous uniform was guaranteed to be a funny story if nothing else.

On the other hand, did he really want to be in a saloon in the middle of nowhere with his drinks being paid for by a technical subordinate at his job? He had seen pictures of the places out here where they hung road signs on every available surface and spontaneous line-dancing was always on the table. It seemed like an invitation to end being hauled by his belt loops and tossed out into the sand by a barkeep before sunset. Maybe it was best to politely refuse.

He must have waited to long to respond as Barney enthusiastically prompted him again, "So, what do you say, Gordon? Are you up for it?"

"Sorry. No thank you," he quickly signed before returning his attention on trying to decipher the points on the scatterplot in front of him.

"Of course. I'm sure you're real busy down here, Doc. I know not to make myself a bother," Barney mumbled towards the door rather than Gordon with his expression deflated and his posture even more slack than usual.

Oh, he couldn't stand it when Barney made that face on him. For someone only three years younger than him, he had such a baby face, all soft features despite the stubble he insisted could be a full beard. There was something about him that just made you want to follow him to the ends of the Earth if he asked nicely. 

Because of all that charisma....it had to be that. All the other guards liked him. Hell, even most of the science team liked him which seemed to be a hard sell, something about company policies. He couldn't be the only one who felt that way about Barney....

"I have to work late," Gordon added after a few moments of deliberation. It wasn't exactly the truth. It was a Saturday afternoon. It was mostly cleaning up reports from the week. It was glorified clerical work, and truthfully, if Barney hadn't popped in, he might have already been off shuffling to catch the 4:15 tram back to his dorm to get a more proper nap. He just could not bare to see the guard slink off like that.

"Do you really think that's the best idea, Doc?"

He made a dismissive wave and went back to squinting at the incomprehensible soup of data spewed out by some junior research associate or maybe a well-trained pigeon on a keyboard. 

Taking the hint, Gordon was left in silence with his poorly lit screen and the promise of finalized reports lazily circling his head.

~~~

One more excruciating block of re-entering values from preliminary system check inventories for the spectrometer.

If he could finish getting this dull string of digits into a readable format, he could slam the files and the computer lid closed and call it a day.

If was the operative word now as he barely pushed himself to focus on one set of numbers at a time. It wasn't really his fault that Black Mesa found making newbies do work that could be easily automated or delegated across employees was an acceptable form of company hazing.

There was a soft knock on the open entryway to the lab he had cooped himself up in for the day.

Great. 

Somebody had got wind of his brief power nap, and now, human resources was never going to live it down. 

He ignored the knocking and typed in a needless correction to the entry he had been barely focusing on for the last half hour. 

There was another knock, this time accompanied with winded panting.

Reluctantly, he turned his chair toward the entrance to reveal the silhouette of a guard filling it.

He wasn't sure which was sweatier, Barney or the two bottles of previously chilled beers laced between the fingers of his right hand.

"Barney..." he started to question with his eyebrows knit together. He did not get far as Barney seemed to anticipate the refusal far before Gordon could construct it.

"You said you would be busy most of tonight, and seeing as I had my break coming up, I figured I'd just cut out the middle man and bring you a drink myself."

"Is that even allowed? Aren't you still on duty?"

"Otis cleared me and so did Kleiner. Something about it being an exception for your mental well-being."

He frowned slightly at that. He wasn't that bad off. A little sleepless, a little fidgety, and a little forgetful of lower tasks every once in a while were fair assessments, but the fact his mentor was allowing him to violate the first rule of lab safety due to outward manifestations of stress might be a bit troubling.

"So, what do you say? You want to see how fast I can get these suckers open using the countertop?!" Barney asked again with a huge grin.

"Not now."

It was the simplest response he could give. Barney gad seen him falter enough for a lifetime. There was no need to drag out the workday or compound his tension headache with a hangover. There was no need to complicate matters with Barney with such a potentially risky shared experience either.

Barney wasn't done with his objections, or at least he wasn't done pretending that Gordon could still be coaxed into this scheme, "What? The savior of Black Mesa cannot let himself have one break?"

"Don't start on that again, Calhoun," his lips was a firm straight line as he signed it. He knew very well that his work, while critical, was not this huge marvel of modern science everyone hyped it up to be. He was just an ordinary guy who got stuck with dead-end office work like everybody else. There was nothing special about him, and it got stressful to try to live up to the towering expectations of others. 

Barney didn't seem to see it that way though as he immediately went back to his zealous little speech, "I mean it, Doc. You've brought energy to this place I haven't seen before. Everyone's so excited to see that brilliant idea of yours play out. People are fighting tooth and nail just to be near that test. You are breathing new life into this place, and if it works- I mean when it works, Doc- you are going to spread that energy to the world. It'll be bigger than the moon landing. I'll bet you on that."

"Aperture is doing something similar. It's not really anything that people have not thought of. It's just a test to see if my way works."

After he finished his sentence, he immediately looked away. If he had to look at Barney, he would get sucked up in that sparkle in his eyes. He was not going to let himself get into an argument he had no chance of winning if he could help it. 

"Hey, at the very least, you might have inspired me to do something more than slum around here. I might finish that degree I was working around if they'll let me. You better watch out. I might be a lab boy soon enough." 

"When pigs fly, Barn."

"Oh hush, Doc. You could at least be nice since I'm the one trying to cheer you up."

"Cheer me up?" 

So, Barney had been doing all of this as a favor? That meant that he owed the guard quite a lot.

"I didn't mean anything bad by it, Doc. Don't fret over it," Barney tried to correct himself and comfort Gordon. It was a bit too late for that. 

Gordon hated nothing more than being indebted to others. The thought of that utter lack of control arising from a show of weakness or inability made his stomach turn. It was why he worked himself to the bone to skate by through college without debt, drawing from merit scholarships and carefully scrimped and saved earnings from a mediocre grocery job. It was part of why he had shied away from his new coworkers. He did not want to create any social obligations he couldn't keep. It seems Barney had once again disrupted his careful plans.

"Come on, Barn. I have something to show you."

"You don't have to make it up to me, Gordon. That's not what I meant."

He kept tugging Barney's arm to carefully, or as carefully as he could considering the maze-like corridors, the five inch height difference, and his general clumsiness would allow, get him out of the stuffy interior hallway.

"The beer's are going to get warm if they aren't already like this."

The temperature of drinks was far from Gordon's mind. He had an objective far simpler than hammering away at a keyboard, and his focus would not be broken from it.

~~~

One foot in front of the other. 

If he could just get Barney to coordinate with him through the elevators and corridors and now the airlock of Black Mesa, he would finally start to chip away at the massive social debt he had been barely aware that he was incurring.

They were out in open air now, dry and warm and freely flowing in sharp contrast to the cool, stale air inside. 

"Gordon, I really don't think it's a good idea to drink these on the tram."

He shook his head. Since when had Barney gotten so worried about those sort of things. And when had Barney been so keen about guessing Gordon's ideas.

Taking a few more steps backwards, he tapped the edge of the tram platform before letting go of Barney's arm.

He took his spot with his legs dangling over the platform. Fortunately, the guard was quick to join him in taking a spot right next to him.

"Isn't this dangerous?" Barney noted as he used the sharp edge of the platform to pop the cap off one of the bottles, the other one lingering beside Gordon.

He shrugged. Truthfully, he had never thought to sit on the edge of the tracks like this. It just felt natural. He supposed he would worry about that later. For now, he could focus on the warmth of the sun against his skin and the warmth of the easy grin Barney was half-hiding behind the beer he was nursing.

Barney took a long sip from his bottle before speaking, "Gosh, Doc. It's beautiful out here. Have you been out here with someone before?"

"As if I have anyone to bring out here, Barn." 

"You're one of those married to their work types, aren't you?"

"Barney," he held the name sign for a moment, making sure they had his attention, "have you actually seen any women down here?"

"There's Doctor Mossman."

He rolled his eyes heavily at that.

"What?!," Barney added, "She's not your type. Gordon's too good for one of the most esteemed up-and-coming scientist at the facility. Are you threatened by someone being smarter than you? Does Doctor Freeman need to feel better than everyone else, huh?"

"I'd rather share something like this with someone who doesn't constantly looks like they want to spit in my coffee."

"So I see that competitive streak isn't just about me and the vents."

"You wouldn't have lasted a minute at MIT if you think I'm that bad."

"You're just dodging the question now, Freeman. I might just be a glorified theft monitor, but I can tell when you're being shifty."

"Jokes on you, Calhoun. I don't even remember the question."

"You know you could tell me if you brought someone out here, Doc."

"I'm waiting for the right person..."

"Right, of course," Barney conceded with the signs of his earlier pouting creeping back on to his face.

The air was heavier now. Questions were choked back presumably on both ends.

Clouds swirled past in the brilliant blue sky seen through crevices in the transportation system.

With a yawn and a stretch, Barney stood on the edge of the tram platform, his eyes a little less brighter than earlier.

"I...I really ought to be getting back to the dorms...."

He had to say something. He couldn't just let him leave, not now, not like this.

"Barney, I think I owe you something..."

"If it's about the microwave, you can drop it. I told you I was going to take care of it. I wouldn't dream of a newer recruit like you taking the fall for something like that."

"It's not the microwave, Barn."

"If it's about the chips from the other day on your desk, those were a gift. I know they are what you usually get"

"It's not about the chips or the gummy bears or the soda...or the flowers."

"That last one was a misdelivery."

"Would you just get over here, Barney?"

"Gee, Doctor Freeman, when did you get so fierce? I didn't remember you having so much bite."

Reluctantly, he amended his statement with one simple word, "Please?"

Barney finally complied. He could hardly believe that for once today the guard was going along with his plans. He was returning to his spot sitting so close to Gordon that their knees could touch.

"Now, what was so important that you had to drag me..."

Gordon cut him off by balancing one hand on his leg and leaning in for a quick kiss.

He pulled back after a few moments, pupils blown a bit too wide for his critical green eyes now.

There was a moment of quiet pause. A mix of regret and excitement was mounting and culminating in a brilliant red hue in Gordon's cheeks.

"You're drunk," Barney blurted out, perhaps just as flustered as Gordon was now waiting for a response. How romantic.

Gordon held up his full, lukewarm bottle of beer that Barney had neglected to help open. 

To further his point he added, "A lot less than you are, Calhoun."

"I bet I could still get through those vents faster than you even with the slight disadvantage, Freeman," Barney replied with a mischievous grin now lighting up his features.

"Is that a formal bet, Barn?"

"Maybe later....I've got something to return from the lab..."

And before Gordon had even gotten his hands in place to ask what, Barney was pressing a soft kiss against his lips.

It was at moments like this that he didn't mind these slow days of menial work at Black Mesa. If nothing else, the job had some great benefits.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been fun writing content tailored specifically for me during my start in the fandom early last year. I hope you enjoyed it too. <3


End file.
